Chapter Twenty Four
I am BACK! Thanks for your patience—especially for the review replies! Glad everyone is still reading!
How the HELL did I get here? was the first thing Penelope thought as she opened her eyes. Her eyes fell upon four blank white walls, unwelcoming and unfamiliar. It was almost as though she had resurfaced from a deep and dark ocean after being trapped there for a long time, struggling for air….and now she was free. Or was she?
"Good morning," a nurse greeted in a monotone as she entered. It almost sounded like she'd been pre-programmed to say that.
"Why am I here?" Penelope's voice felt thick and cottony, nearly unrecognizable as her own. The nurse paused, dropping her clipboard and pen. The resounding clang as the objects hit the floor reverberated into Penelope's very being. Suddenly, she became acutely aware that something was completely wrong. Wherever she was, and however she had ended up there, she knew it didn't happen under normal circumstances.
"Doctor! The patient is talking!" the nurse cried-in French. Why was she not speaking English. This was Virginia, after all. Or was it?
A plane. She had been on a plane. It had been a long flight…..she remembered flying over an ocean…..she'd disembarked….
And then it was foggy from there.
"Did you ask for a name?" Penelope was brought back to the present as the doctor's crisp French pierced her ears. She, of course, could speak the language fluently, and for that she was grateful.
"No, I was too shocked!" the nurse replied, her eyes still as wide as saucers. She and the doctor stared long and hard at their patient, as though she was the painting that could be either a duck or a bunny and they were trying to figure her out.
"Do you know your name?" the doctor finally asked, though he reverted back to English, considering perhaps that that was the only language she knew.
"Penelope Garcia," Penelope answered clearly. "Where I am I? What am I doing here?" The two people in front of her exchanged nervous glances.
"You've been here in a pysch ward in the general hospital in Paris more than two weeks," the nurse responded uneasily. "And you've been awake about as the average person usually is. Meaning, you were never unconscious or anything."
Penelope was stunned, hardly able to comprehend what the doctors said. She'd been here for awhile, yet she didn't remember it? She wracked her brain, trying to recall any sliver of a detail, but all that came was a fog.
"It could be a result of PTSD," the doctor muttered. "We did find evidence of massive physical trauma suffered a few months ago, including wounds indicative of rape. Remember, she's also pregnant. I think we've got this figured out." He said all this in a voice too hushed for Penelope to make out.
"Please, doctor, explain this to me!" she exclaimed. "I need to know what's wrong with me, why I would've come all the way to France from Virginia!"
"You know that you are from Virginia?" the doctor asked, making a note of it on his clipboard. "Do you remember anything else on your own? Maybe the phone number of a relative that we could call?"
No. She couldn't. Try as she might, Penelope couldn't think of a single person she knew. There must be someone that was worried about her right now…..at least she hoped. She didn't truly live a hermit's life…..did she? Why didn't she know anyone? And then she felt something move, ever so slightly, in her stomach.
"Am I…..Am I pregnant?" she whispered in disbelief. The nurse could only nod apologetically. Penelope quickly realized that she must know someone else: the father of the baby!
"Can you figure out who the father is?" she asked. The nurse shook her head.
"We'll have to wait until the child is born. I need to warn you though: we did find physical evidence to suggest you had been assaulted a few months prior to your arrival at the hospital."
She'd been raped. The word the nurse was so trying to avoid. Penelope felt sick. Maybe the only person she'd ever known was someone who hurt her…
She was alone. Completely alone in the world, with no one to keep her company but a doctor and a nurse in a French psycho ward.
A lily. A lily flashed through her vision. A lily, bloodstained and broken, lying on the ground. A shadow of a man reaching down to pick it up. He held the lily in his hands, tenderly caressing it as his shoulders shook. He stroke each petal gently, as though the lily meant the world to him. And then the flower wilted completely, despite his tender care. It was fallen, dead. There was nothing he could do to bring it back, no matter how hard he begged it to.
Penelope's eyes filled with tears. Her vision made little sense to her….and yet it did. A lily. It seemed important to her…somehow. The man holding it…..who was he? Why did he care so much for a bloodstained flower?
Why couldn't she remember?
It was as though she was drowning and someone was throwing her a line, but every time she went to grasp it….it would slide through the gaps between her fingers and slip away.
I researched the effects of PTSD, and memory loss like this is possible, so there is some truth to this fic. So we learn a bit about what happened to Penelope…..next chapter we will have some Derek. This might not be as straightforward as one would think….